Moderator
David Potter
Classical Studies Department, University of Michigan

How do we use history? In recent years scholars and pundits from all points on the political compass have delighted in drawing parallels between the sitution of the United States today and that of empires in the past, an exercise that has been stimulated above all else by the invasion of Iraq in 2003. Indeed that invasion has raised genuine questions about the use of military force, and the use of parallels drawn from the past to both justify and predict the course of events.

The questions that emerges most often from the invasion of Iraq is "how does the action of the American hyperpower compare with that of other empires, and is it doomed to lose its dominance?" Bypassing European empires of more recent date, pundits have tended to head straight for the ancient world, to the empires of Alexander and Augustus. But how are these parallels drawn, and what are the appropriate terms for framing that discussion?